


Pilot

by malchanceux



Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Coda, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, F/M, Genderbending, Girl!Clack Kent, High school kids can be such assholes, Homophobic Themes, Mentions of homophobia, Pre-Het, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 09:29:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9173752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malchanceux/pseuds/malchanceux
Summary: Clark hadn't fit in since she hit puberty in middle school. She was too tall, too muscular, too awkward to have any kind of feminine appeal, or so the boys at school would always tease. Clark desperately wanted to have more friends than just the misfit group she, Pete, and Chloe made up. Alas, she seemed destined to live out a truly unimpressive high school career.That is, until a certain billionaire runs her off a bridge with his car.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted to read a good female!Clark fic but couldn't find one. Wrote a quickie instead. Not sure if there will be more or not.

Clark glared daggers at the lazy river below her, watching in envy at the fish that swam mindlessly against the current. Often Clark came here to brood for one reason or another, as her thoughts seemed to like to relive every awkward, embarrassing moment of her high school career. Today was no different. Nor was the reason Clark had come to the bridge.

Yet again, while trying her hardest not to, Clark had managed to make an absolute dunce out of herself trying to talk to Lana Lang.

If the fish only knew what they had, Clark thought bitterly. Sometimes she wished she could trade her strength and her speed for the ability to breathe underwater. Maybe then she could  _ swim  _ away from her total lack of social grace.

Clark signed heavy and overly dramatic as a noisy truck passed by. She supposed she ought to start making her way home before her parents started to worry. Just because her oafishness had ruined her day didn’t mean Clark should ruin theirs with undue stress.

Clark turned from the guard rail to start the quick trek home when she heard a deafening  _ ‘pop’ _ . Immediately she thought of the time the tractor’s tire had blown up while mulching the field. There’s a terrible sound of metal scraping asphalt, and before Clark has a chance to register what’s happening, a car is slamming into her legs, throwing her against its windshield, and barrelling them both off the side of the bridge.

Clark doesn’t register the cold  _ slap  _ of hitting the water because she’s still too stunned from getting  _ hit by a car.  _ It hurts, which is a strange sensation, but she knows that the bone deep ache she feels is far from what she  _ should  _ be feeling. There’s a moment of idle floating where Clark slowly registers that all her limbs are intact and not broken. She feels the beginning pull in her lungs telling her she needs air, when Clark realizes:  _ so does the guy stuck in the car.  _

With a rushing kind of clarity, panic starts to set in. There’s a few awkward seconds where she tries to swim down to the overly expensive sports car with clumsy, futile kicks.

_ The fish make it look so easy. _

With a frustrated gurgle, Clark wrenches her boots off her feet and yanks her heavy flannel from her arms. With a strong, well placed kick, Clark is close enough to start to pull back the roof of the vehicle. She rips the seat belt in half like paper, grabs Mr. Wannabe-Mario-Andretti from his seat by his coat lapels, and used the car door as leverage to propel them to the surface and the shore.

When Clark finally heaves them both onto the sand, she realizes the guy’s not breathing.

“Oh please no,” she says in a rush. The only kind of CPR she’s familiar with is what she has seen through  _ Grey's Anatomy _ and  _ House _ . She tries shaking his shoulders first, yelling at him to wake up, but the driver just lays there, still as a corpse and cold from the river water.

With little confidence, Clark arranges nervous hands over his chest and begins compressions in quick, careful movements. She thinks she remembers something about the number  _ thirty  _ before checking on the recipient. 

Nothing. He’s still not breathing,  _ oh my god he’s still not breathing. _

“Don’t die on me!” As it comes out of her mouth it sounds corny and ridiculous; a hysterical giggle pushes past Clark’s lips and vaporizes in the stale Kansas heat. “I’m the one that got hit by the car, you don’t get to die!”

Clark tilts the drivers head back, hands shaking and mind reeling. She pinches his nose and tries to  _ breathe  _ for the man. Once, twice--she goes back to quick compressions.

It feels like an eternity. Clark tries mouth-to-mouth in one more desperate attempt when the guy starts to choke up water, eyes flying open in a disoriented panic. Clark draws back like her hands have been burned, terrified she’ll do something wrong and send the driver back into unconsciousness.

“Are you okay?” she asks, and knows it’s a stupid question because  _ of course he’s not okay he almost died. _

The man just lays there and pants for a moment, sucking down air like it was going out of style. He looks at her first puzzled, then relieved. 

“I could have sworn I’d hit you,” he says breathlessly.

Clark looks down at herself, her soaking wet jeans and undershirt, torn from the collision but with no blood--Clark knew there would be no bruises either. The ache she had felt on impact has already faded into nothing. She looks back up at the bridge where the guard rail is broken, parts of it at the bottom of the river like she should have been.

“You did,” she says distractedly. Clark looks back at the driver. “You did hit me.”

  
  
  
  
  


Two days after the accident, Clark comes home from school to find a Chevy Colorado ZR2 parked in their driveway. She whistles low, walks around the big blue beast  _ twice  _ just to admire it. Four doors, all wheel drive; diesel only but god the thing could  _ move  _ for something so big. Whitney Fordman’s dad had just bought one not a month prior, the hulking truck vicariously inflating the jock’s ego just that much more. But the Fordman’s truck was red; which left the question of who this vehicle belonged to and why they were at the Kent farm.

Clark finds her mother in the kitchen cooking.

“Who’s the guest, ma?”

“If you’re asking about the truck out front, it’s yours,” Martha smiles at Clark’s dumbfounded look. “It’s a gift from Lex Luthor.”

Martha pulls an envelope from her breast pocket with flour caked hands. Grinning ear to ear, Clark rips open the seal and pulls out a card. It is an expensive thick stationary with the initials  _ L. L.  _ pressed onto the back; the pen strokes are perfect cursive in stark, black ink. It looked more like an invitation to a King's Ball than a simple  _ ‘thank you’  _ note.

_ Dear Clark, _

_ Drive safely.  _

_ Always in your debt, _

_ Maniac in the Porsche. _

“Awesome,” Clark pulled back the kitchen curtain to admire the beautiful metal monstrosity sitting in their driveway. She could just see it now, pulling up to school behind the wheel. Everything would be so different; people would be looking at her not because they thought she was a total spazz, but because she was actually cool for once. Leaning against the side of the truck, maybe she’d even be able to string together a coherent sentence to Lana Lang--they could be friends and then Clark wouldn’t get  _ picked on  _ anymore.

“Where are the keys?”

Martha’s expression changed then, minutely, from a smile to a--well. To a look Clark knew very, very well.

“Dad has them, doesn’t he?”

“He’s in the barn.”

With a heavy sigh, Clark trudged toward disappointment. 

The sound of the saw was as familiar as it was deafening. She watched for a moment as her father fed bundles of branches into the machine with practiced ease, not wanting to startle him. It took a few minutes before he noticed her lurking, but he quickly shut the saw off once he did. His expression told Clark they were about to have a disagreement, something they seemed to do a lot more of as Clark got older.

“You can’t keep the truck,” Jonathan said with a certainty that once left no room for argument. But Clark wasn’t a kid anymore, and she felt she more than earned the gift Lex had so thoughtfully sent her.

“Why not?” she challenged. “I saved the guys life.”

“So you think you deserve a prize?”

_ Yes,  _ she almost said, but held her tongue. “That’s not what I meant.”

There’s a moment of silence where her father acts as though the  _ discussion  _ is over by removing his gear and putting things away. An idea comes to her.

“What if you drive the new truck and I drive the old one? Everybody wins.” She would still be kind of cool driving the older pick-up; wouldn't have as many bragging rights, but how many 17 years olds had their own ride?

“This is  _ not  _ about winning Clark.”

She winces; wrong tactic. But she’s not backing down so easily. She  _ wanted _ that truck.

“It’s not like the Luthor’s can’t afford it.”

Again Jonathan went silent, still tidying up the barn. He wouldn’t be budged, Clark could tell by the stiff set of his shoulders that he had dug his heels in the moment the car had been delivered.

With a frustrated sigh, Clarked turned to climb the barn’s stairs.  _ This isn’t fair. _

“Clark, sweetheart, I know you’re upset. And that’s normal.”

That struck a nerve. Clark threw her things on the staircase and turned a glare at her father.

“Normal?” she repeated, indignant. She brushed past her father and headed straight for the saw. “Does  _ this  _ look normal to you?”

She switched on the machine and shoved her hand inside. There was a rough sound of metal scraping against something it couldn’t quite grind up, and Jonathan was on her in an instant, panicked and pulling her arm back out of the mouth of the saw.

After a moment, Clark allowed her arm to be removed and flipped off the saw.

Jonathan looked at her hand like he’d never seen it before. There wasn’t a single scratch.

“I didn’t dive in after Lex’s car, remember? It hit me straight on at 60 miles per hour and took me over the side of the bridge with it. I came out of that completely unscaved. Does that sound  _ normal  _ to you?”

Clark feels tears pricking at her eyes. She’d give  _ anything  _ to be normal and just fit in for once. She pulls her hand back and heads back upstairs. He could give back the damn truck and she’d just accept being a total  _ waste of space  _ for her entire high school experience.

  
  
  
  


 

Clark recognized how ridiculous this was, hiding out and brooding in a graveyard, but considering what happened at her last hangout, she figured this was the safest place she could be. Fat chance of getting hit by a car here, right?

Not like that seemed to be an actual concern now.

Who would have guessed just how far on the spectrum of  _ freak  _ she was. An alien, really? Clark felt a bubble of hysteria building in her chest, just waiting to burst. She still wasn’t a hundred percent sure a cameraman wasn’t going to pop out of the bushes and tell her she’d just been punk’d. 

Clark thinks about the rough years of middle school to the present torture of high school; things begin to make sense. In elementary it hadn’t been so bad. She had looked just like all the other little girls, but as puberty hit, that all changed.

Clark was taller than most girls her age, her shoulders wide and her chest small. Her gangly limbs didn’t grow into slender, graceful things like Prom Queen potentials; like Lana Lang. Instead Clark had muscle.  Her tummy wasn’t flat, but curved by abs much too prominent to be desirable. She wasn’t a bodybuilder by any means, but the one time she had tried to brave a bikini at the lake...

_ “We don’t date girls on ‘roids.” _

_ “Trying to make the football team, Kent?” _

_ “Didn’t know Schwarzenegger had a sister.” _

Clark had tried to compensate for her stature with makeup and clothes, but she couldn’t keep up with the other girls. The places everyone else shopped, Clark couldn’t afford. She wasn’t about to ask her parents to blow a few hundred dollars on her so she could make  _ friends. _

It was senior year and Clark was beginning to give up on makeup and dresses; of making the cheerleading squad or being part of any clique besides the one she, Pete, and Chloe made up. And now, knowing the  _ truth  _ of where she came from, of what she  _ was-- _

“Hello?”

And now Lana Lang was going to find her hiding in a graveyard.  _ Great. _

“It’s just me,” Clark called out, not wanting to be anymore of a creep than she already appeared to be.

“Clark Kent?” Lana’s perfectly plucked brows furrowed. She was holding a thing of flowers… And Clark felt awful. Suddenly her new hiding place didn’t seem like such a good idea; she felt incredibly insensitive. 

But Lana, beautiful,  _ thoughtful  _ Lana Lang was quick to put Clark at ease. She was there visiting her deceased parents,  _ speaking  _ with them, as she said. She missed them terribly, and though Whitney thought it was silly, Lana came every so often just to feel close to them.

Clark offers to walk Lana home, and they must talk for at least an hour, sharing and comforting each other and trading advice. It wasn’t until they were saying their goodbye’s that Clark realized this is what she had been waiting for, for  _ years.  _

“Are you going to the Homecoming dance with anyone?” Clark forces it past chapped lips before she can chicken out. If they went together, if the school saw how awkward and husky Clark Kent got along with Lana Lang, then things would be different.

“I’m going with Whitney.”

A cold splash of reality. 

“Oh, right, of course,” Clark isn’t sure how well she’s hiding her utter disappointment and embarrassment; she hopes the dark of night is enough to hide how red her face must be. “I forgot. Sorry.”

“Aren’t you and Pete going together?”

“Uh, no. We’re just, uh, friends. And he’s trying to ask… someone else, I think,” Clark clears her throat, shoves her hands in her pockets and looks anywhere except Lana’s eyes. “I might not even be going, honestly. It’s not really my kind of thing.”

“Well, if you come, I’ll save a dance for you.”

That startles Clark enough to make eye contact, and Lana gives her a playful wink. A surprised smile splits Clark’s lips; a startled huff escaping her when Lana gives her a quick hug, and a quicker peck on the cheek. Heat once again rises past Clark’s collar, but this time it’s a more pleasant kind of burn across her neck and cheeks.

“Thank you, I’ll uh, I’ll definitely try to make it then.”  _ Smooth.  _ But Lana doesn’t seem to mind Clark’s usual stunted nature. Instead, she laughs softly and gives a small wave goodbye. Clark waits until Lana is safely in her house before she turns back to head toward the Kent farm.

Neither of them notice Whitney, mouth a hardline of discontent and temper fuming as he sits behind the wheel of his daddy’s new truck. He starts the engine when he’s sure Lana has gone to bed, dark thoughts following him home.

  
  
  
  
  


The Kent’s reconcile in the morning. That’s how it always is when they fight; none of them could stay mad at each other for long. There’s a heartfelt apology from Clark, and reassurance from her mother and father.

Clark still has to return the truck though.

She drives the vehicle up to the Luthor mansion and parks just outside the gate. There’s a call button at the main entrance, but nobody answers her. Clark isn’t sure if she’ll have the self control to drive the truck back a second time to return it, so she does what any reasonable teenager would do: she parks the car right there and wedges herself between the gates bars.

The whole walk up the drive is like approaching a castle in a fairytale. Every hedge is trimmed just so, the grass strangely even, and every flower is in bloom (though she knows for a fact half the things in the expansive garden are not yet in season). The building itself looks mythical; stone and stained glass and vines climbing up every which way. She wonders if her dad would still have her return the truck if he saw their mansion in person. They  _ definitely  _ could afford the gift.

When Clark gets to the front door she tries knocking. After ten minutes she gets impatient again. Clark tries the door handle: it’s open.

There’s a moment of hesitation where Clark thinks about turning back and heading home, but once she gets a glimpse of what’s beyond the threshold, she’s in awe. If the outside was grand, the inside was out of this world. Ceilings so high she wondered how the place was only three stories, mahogany  _ everywhere;  _ the flooring, the wall panelling, the stair rails--and the art work, oh my; were those  _ originals? _

Clark ends up wandering the mansion a good five minutes, just  _ staring  _ at everything, until she remembers the reason she had come in the first place.

_ Focus, keep your cool, and whatever you do-- _

Clark hears the clanking of metal against metal and peaks into a side room. Suddenly two armed fencers come rushing through the maze that was the Luthor mansion. The fight only lasts for a moment before one fencer bests the other and pins their opponent to the wall with the sharp point of their rapier. 

“Remember,” the winner--a woman--says cockily as they removed their headgear. “To always keep your surroundings in your mind's eye.”

Clark only has a moment to process the other fencer is Lex Luthor himself before a rapier is being launched in her direction. Her eyes grow wide and she stares, completely unmoving, at the sword now embedded in the wall just a foot away from her head. She’s pretty sure her mouth is gaping like a fish, but it takes a moment to collect herself.

“Clark?”

“Um. Hi.”

_ And whatever you do,  _ she thinks bitterly,  _ don’t embarrass yourself. Way to go, Clark. _

“I didn’t see you,” Lex says apologetically. 

Clark flushes--she can feel it spread from her face down her neck.

“I tried to buzz in, but I didn’t get an answer.”

Lex grabs the sword from the wall, glancing at the hole it made in the panelling and smiles sheepishly at Clark. His expression quickly turns quizzical, however.

“How’d you get past the gate?”

“I kind of squeezed through the bars,” as she says it Clark realizes what a mistake this was, coming unannounced to a  _ billionaire's mansion _ . “I’m so sorry if this is a bad time--”

“Oh no, no,” Lex waves off her rambling with a practiced smile. “I think Hykia has sufficiently kicked my ass for the day, haven’t you?”

The woman in question smirks, nods, and makes to leave. She’s gorgeous, Clark notices, and she walks with a certain kind of  _ sunter;  _ a self assuredness that Clark had always envied of all the other high school girls.

“I need to get changed out of this sweaty uniform, if you wouldn’t mind. The gym is just this way.”

Clark nods and follows behind at Lex’s heels, not sure what to say, or even what to do with her hands, honestly. 

“It’s a nice place,” she tries, but it comes out sounding almost like a question and  _ good god this is why no one liked her in school. _

“If you’re dead and you are looking for a place to haunt,” Lex replies. Clark back pedals. 

“I just meant it’s very roomy,” she tries.

“It is the Luthor ancestral home, or so my father claims. He had it shipped here from Ireland stone by stone.” 

“I remember when construction first started; trucks rolled through town for weeks,” a thought occurs to her. “No one ever moved in though, once it was completed.”

Lex stops then, halfway up a flight of stairs and Clark’s stomach drops, terrified she had just said something terribly insulting. The expression Lex gives her is not one of anger, however; he looks at her like he’s letting her in on an inside joke.

“My father had no intention of living here,” he says, “He’s never even stepped a foot through the front door.”

“Then why move it?”

Lex’s smile grows wider, like he’s delivering a punchline. “Because he could.”

Lex leads her to a full sized gym on the second floor. He takes off a few pieces of the uniform before he leaves her for a moment, heading back down the hallway. After a few minutes he comes back in dress pants and a button up. Clark’s not sure why, but the blush returns from earlier. She looks down at her work boots, dirt stained jeans, loose flannel and thinks  _ maybe that’s why. _

“So are you enjoying your new ride?” Lex asks, pouring himself a glass of water. He offers one to Clark, but she politely declines. This was awkward enough without her dropping one of his glasses.

“That’s actually why I’m here.”

“What’ the matter, don’t like it? I’m going to have to be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure what you would like.”

“Oh, no, it’s definitely not that!” Clark says a bit too quickly. “I just can’t keep it.”

That gives the billionaire pause. Lex looks at her completely vexed, and Clark wonders if the thought of her saying ‘no’ to the gift ever crossed his mind.

“Clark, you saved my life. I think it’s the least I can do,” Lex says this with a chuckle, like not accepting the truck is just silly. To be fair, Clark would agree with him. But it’s not her decision to make.

Clark looks away for  moment, trying to gather her thoughts. She came up with a script on the way here, of how to politely return the truck and not sound ungrateful.

“Your father doesn’t like me, does he?”

The flush returns and Clark’s eyes snap to Lex’s. She has no idea how to respond to that.

“It’s okay,” Lex says, saving her from stumbling through an answer. He glances at a mirror across the room, slides his hand over the skin of his head. “I’ve been bald since I was nine. I’m used to people judging me before they get to know me.”

And that immediately makes Clark feel a thousand times worse. 

“It’s nothing personal,” she tries to assure, but she’s never been one for telling lies. “He’s just not crazy about your dad, is all.”

“Figures the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree? Understandable,” Lex looks back at Clark. “What about you, did you fall far from the tree?”

Clark looks at her boots for a moment, not sure how to answer. The truth, being that she fell light years away from the tree, just doesn’t seem to fit the moment. She looks back at Lex and gives him a lost expression--she’s honestly not sure what to say. But Lex just smiles back at her, coy, unaffected by her non-answer.

“I better go,” Clark says, and hands Lex the keys. “Thanks for the truck.”

“Clark,” Lex calls just as she’s walking out the door, “Do you believe man can fly?”

Such a strange question; it gives Clark pause.

“Of course Lex, in airplanes.”

“No, I’m not talking about that. I mean soaring through the clouds with nothing but air beneath you.”

“People can’t fly, Lex, not outside their dreams,” She amends. 

“I did,” he says with such certainty, such intensity. “After the accident, when my heart stopped; it was the most exhilarating two minutes of my life. I flew over Smallville, and for the first time, I didn’t see a dead end. I saw a new beginning.”

He reaches out for Clark, places a gentle hand on her shoulder. She swears she can feel the heat of him burn through her shirt.

“Thanks to you, I have a second chance,” Lex pulls back his touch and moves to lean against the front of some fancy looking treadmill. Clark swears she can still feel his hand just as intensely as when it was actually there. “So maybe a car is too much; too flashy. But there must be something I can do, no matter how small, to show my gratitude.”

_ He really didn’t plan on me saying no to the gift, _ Clark thinks with a small smile. Lex seemed so earnest in that moment; she wasn’t sure she had the heart to shoot him down again.

“Can you make a date for Homecoming magically appear?” Clark says jokingly, and then immediately regrets it. If she thought her face was red before, she was wrong.  _ Now  _ it was red.

She couldn’t have sounded more sad, more pathetic and needy than she did in that moment.

“Oh my god that’s not what I meant to say,” she blurts, and good lord that isn’t any better.

Lex laughs then; a deep thing born in the core of his chest, head thrown back and eyes screwed shut. Clark wonders if she concentrates hard enough if the world would eat her whole.

“I’m sorry,” he says, breathless after what Clark considers  _ way too long  _ to be laughing at her expense. “I haven’t laughed like that in a long while.”

Like that makes it any better.

“I can’t make a date magically appear, unfortunately. Otherwise my homecoming dance would have been a much different affair.”

“You expect me to believe  _ you  _ went alone.” Clark snaps. She may be just a little bitter--temper rising like the heat in her cheeks.

“I didn’t go at all,” Lex gestures to his head again. “As an adult, this might not seem so bad. Try being bald in a private school. I was also not athletic or ahead of my peers grade wise.”

In an instant Clark’s agitation vanishes; in its place is shame. She of all people should not be so quick to pass judgement.

_ I guess money doesn’t matter all the much when everyone around you is just as rich... _

“I have an idea,” Lex says. “I understand why your dad can’t accept the truck, but what about something a little more modest. A compromise.”

That makes Clark smile; she hadn’t realized they had been negotiating. He was relentless. “What did you have in mind?”

“I recognize my high school experience is a bit different than yours, but the general rules for the age group is about the same. Why don’t you go with your friends and I lend you a ride. I have a limo just sitting in my garage--I rarely use it. Almost seems a waste, doesn't it?”

“Maybe,” Clark replies. She rankles at the “age group” comment--she is  _ not  _ a child--but again, the billionaire seemed so earnest. Pushy, but for a kind cause.

Still, her father would be just as stubborn about letting her climb into the back of the Luthor limousine. 

“You and your friends could meet here,” Lex said, as though reading her mind. “And at the end of the night my driver could drop you off either here or wherever you may want to go.”

Clark bit her lip, unsure. “I don’t really ever lie to my parents.”

“You wouldn’t be lying,” Lex said with absolute certainty. “Your father told you to return the truck, and you did. You’ll be going to the dance with your friends. You just don’t have to tell him in whose car you’ll be arriving in.”

“I don’t know.”

“You have earned some form of thanks,” an exasperated huff escaped Lex, his head shaking in disbelief. “You’re not strong arming me into any of this--you haven’t asked for repayment. But Clark, you saved my life. My doctor told me the vision I had, of flying, was just my oxygen deprived brain misfiring.”

Again, Lex reaches for her shoulders. He grasps her lightly, encouraging eye contact. He speaks like he’s trying to  _ make  _ her understand what he’s saying, force her to his point of view. “I did not have high hopes coming to this town, to this mansion. I thought I’d be stuck here, never able to get out of the shadow of my father’s success. But the accident changed that;  _ you _ changed that. I feel like I can do a lot of good here. And--”

Lex hesitates, just once, as though he’s trying to find the right words. “I feel like we have a future together, and I wouldn’t want anything to stand in the way of a potential friendship. I know your father doesn’t like mine, and he has his reasons, but maybe… Maybe one of the things I can change is his perception of me. Of the town's perception of me. And in turn I can really make a difference here.”

The hope and the imploring tone of Lex’s voice gets to Clark; all he wants, in this moment, is acceptance, and to not be judged for his father’s actions. And for some reason, doing something nice for Clark--be it buying her a new truck or giving her a ride to her school dance--and Clark accepting the gift is a form of gratification for the young billionaire. 

“I think we could be friends, too,” Clark says shyly. “And a ride to the dance would be awesome. Thank you.”

Lex grins wide, like a child who stole a cookie from the cookie jar and got away with it. Clark wonders if there was any scenario in which she left the Luthor mansion without some sort of a prize. The feeling of butterflies warms her stomach and travels up her spine, both from excitement for the ride in the limo and the thrill of her not-lie. She thinks of the lecture she received in the barn just a day ago--maybe saving someone’s life did not entitle her to a reward, but it was certainly nice to get one anyway.


End file.
